sandr020

I love travelling on trains and ships, but not so much on planes.   St Pancras is a C19th station that provides regional, inter-city, continental services to London. It is London’s second busiest railway station, the terminus for Eurostar trains arriving from Europe. But who was St Pancras? A short Latin account of his martyrdom suggested that Pancras was born to a wealthy Christian family in Phrygia (Turkey). After the death of his par­ents, he moved to Rome with his guardian. There they both gave shelter to Christians persecuted by the Emperor Dioc­letian (284-305 AD). When the Emperor heard of Pancras’ eff­orts to save Christians, he im­mediately summoned him. He tried to dissuade the 14 year old him from Christianity but Pancras was adamant. Enraged, the Emperor ordered Pancras' immediate beheading and burial in Rome c287CE. What made Saint Pancras' cult so potent were the mir­acles assoc­iated with his relics. No wonder that Pancras’ relics were soon distributed to many...

The Silk Road was a trade route for precious silk, but not only silk. It became an East-West network of inter-­con­necting routes linking Central Asian Kingdoms (eg Bukhara, Samarkand, Bishkek and Islamabad) in the west with major China cit­ies; especially the Han and Tang dynasty capital, Changan (modern day Xian) in the east. It was rare for individual traders to cover the whole length of the Silk Road. When each trader arrived at his region’s limit, he sold the goods ac­ross his border. Thus as the goods moved westwards from China, Chinese traders would sell to Central Asians, then to Pers­ians, to Syrians, to the Greeks and Jews, and finally to the Italians. Marco Polo mosaic, by Francesco de' Rossi Ducal Palace,   Genoa The volume of goods traded along the Silk Road increased during the Tang dynasty (618-907), in both directions. The Chin­ese imported gold, gems, per­­fumes, dyes, textiles, ivory and glass, and exported furs, ceram­ics, spices, jade, silk, bronze a...

The Economist Intelligence Unit is a British business providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, including country, industry and management analyses world-wide. Plus, as examined in 2016, it has published an annual Global Liveability Ranking which began in 2004. The Unit ranks cities for their urb­an quality of life, based on assess­ments across five categories — stability, infrastructure, healthcare and culture, education and environment. With Melbourne winning the world title for the past seven years, it may come as a surprise to Australians that Vienna for the first time topped the EIU’s Global Liveability Index. The 2018 results were as follows: 1. Vienna Austria; 2. Melbourne Australia; 3. Osaka Japan; 4. Calgary Canada; 5. Sydney Australia; 6. Vancouver Canada; 7. Toronto Canada and Tokyo Japan; 9. Copen­hagen Denmark and 10. Adelaide Australia. Vienna The differences between the top 30 cities in this index were small. Vienna and Me...

A settlement called Portus Cale was founded on the north bank of the Duoro River in the C4th BC. But nothing much was known before Porto was recovered in 868 AD from the Moorish empire. Sao Bento Railway Station 1900-1916 Prince Henry the Navigator  (1394–1460) was born to English Queen Philippa and Portuguese King John I who had earlier married in Porto, creating a political alliance between Portugal and England. It was Prince Henry who, in the new Portuguese Empire, initiated the Age of Discoveries. Henry supervised the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the exploration of Western Africa, Atlantic Ocean islands and the search for new routes. Only thus did Portugal become a sea-trade force, so it is appropriate that a statue in a park honours Prince Henry still today. Prince Henry, the Navigator pointing to a far-off place across the Atlantic Once Portugal became an economic power in the age of the great geo­graph­ical disc...

      Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924} was born into a well educated, middle class family in Simbirsk, east of Moscow. The children grew up in comfort but with a strongly developed sense of justice. But when in 1887 the oldest sibling was hanged in St Petersburg for conspiring to assassinate Czar Alexander III, the family was horrified. At university, Ulyanov absorbed the writings of Marx and Engels . On graduating law from St Peters­burg University in 1891, Lenin became a leader of a Marxist group, distributing revolut­ionary pamphlets to work­ers. He was carefully watch­ed by the police, arrested in 1895, convicted of dist­rib­uting propaganda and sentenced to 3 years in Siberia. Nadezhda Krupskaya , a young fellow traveller, join­ed him there and they married. Now called Lenin, the couple returned from Siberia and in 1906 chose exile in Western Europe. Moving between Prague, London and Bern, publishing a radical news­paper and trying to organise an international Ma...

Built in Belfast by the British shipping company White Star Line , the three Olympic-class ocean liners were RMS Olympic (1910), RMS Titanic (1911) and HMHS Britannic (1914). For both Olympic and Titanic, the pas­s­enger accommodation was of unrivalled extent and magnific­ence, and the excellent result defies improvement. The Olympic and the Titanic could each carry 3,295 people: 2,435 passengers and a crew of 860. Travellers were separated into 3 classes: 689 in first class, 674 in second class and 1,026 in third class. First class stair case RMS Titanic  had ten decks: cabins and public areas were located on the Promenade, Bridge, Shelter, Saloon, Upper, Middle and Lower Decks. The other three decks were reserved for the crew, cargo and machinery. The first class public rooms included a dining saloon, reception room, restaurant, lounge, reading and writing room, smoking room and the veranda cafes and palm courts. During Titan­ic's design, entirely new features were added:...

The 1889–1890 Flu Pandemic was similar to the great Spanish Flu pandemic and might have prepared doctors and armies in WW1. It was first noted in different countries: China (1888); Athabasca in Canada (May 1889); Greenland (summer 1889), Tomsk in Siberia and Bukhara in Uzbek­istan (Oct 1889), St Peter­sburg in late Oct 1889, and expanded rapidly via railway across Europe. In Paris, the first cases were recorded on 17th Nov; in Berlin and Vienna on 30th Nov; in London in mid Dec, and in southern European countries in late Dec. The flu spread overseas to Boston and New York in Jan 1890. And then throughout North and South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania by mid 1890. The most tragic period was between Dec 1889 and Jan 1890; the majority of the million deaths were older than 50. So how different was the Spanish Flu Epidemic of WW1 ? Even before the arrival of air travel, Spanish flu swept around the world in just 3 catastrophic months from Oct 1918 to Jan 1919 - and killed more people t...